Evaluation of the Visually Impaired Experience of the Sound Environment in Urban Spaces

Visually impaired people have unique perceptions of and usage requirements for various urban spaces. Therefore, understanding these perceptions can help create reasonable layouts and construct urban infrastructure. This study recruited 26 visually impaired volunteers to evaluate 24 sound environments regarding clarity, comfort, safety, vitality, and depression. This data was collected in seven different types of urban spaces. An independent sample non-parametric test was used to determine the significance of the differences between environmental evaluation results for each evaluation dimension and to summarize the compositions of sound and space elements in the positive and negative influence spaces. The results suggested that visually impaired people (1) feel comfort, safety, and clarity in parks, residential communities, and shopping streets; (2) have negative perceptions of vegetable markets, bus stops, hospitals, and urban departments; (3) feel anxious when traffic sounds, horn sounds, manhole cover sounds, and construction sounds occur; and (4) prefer spaces away from traffic, with fewer and slower vehicles, with a suitable space scale, and moderate crowd density. These results provide a reference for the future design of activity venues (i.e., residential communities, vegetable markets, bus stops, parks, shopping streets, hospitals, and urban functional departments) and the planning of accessibility systems for visually impaired urban residents.

Environmental Influences on the Settlements Patterns of Communities in the Marshes of Iraq

In the field of residential community planning, one of the appropriate places to study the mutual influences between man and the environment, away from the influences, concepts and mechanisms of contemporary planning theories are isolated environments in rural areas, and the marshlands in Iraq represent one of these models. These areas still retain the planning patterns of residential communities for thousands of years. This research attempts to conduct a descriptive study of traditional settlement patterns, which relied on the capabilities of the surrounding areas to provide planning and architectural solutions based on the environmental factor. Establishing such a clear framework for these impacts can help in any future interventions or development processes in the region and ensure that any random or irregular interventions that may have occurred previously are not repeated. Which will preserve the components and sustainability of this ecosystem and maintain the harmony and integration between the elements of the architectural environment and the natural elements.

THE PROBLEM OF THE EMERGENCE OF SLUMS AND METHODS FOR ARCHITECTURAL SOLUTION

This article raises questions about the need to provide housing for poor citizens or to create opportunities to improve their housing conditions. The causes of illegal development and slum areas are determined as well as architectural methods for their solution in various countries of the world. This problem has long been known and affects many countries and, in particular, the Kingdom of Morocco. There, it is exacerbated by the imperfection, and sometimes absence, of legislative documents, corruption and unwillingness of the authorities to deal with this issue that is vital for the country. Disappointing statistics on the spread of slums and the situation of people living there are given. The statistics of the growth of illegal development in the city of Casablanca are given as an example. The experience of dealing with this problem in other countries (on the example of Chile, Mexico, Germany) is considered. To solve this problem, a social housing complex in Iquique, Quinta Monroy, was erected in Chile. The decision was very successful and a similar social project was repeated in Mexico. The residential complex in Dessau Tertin, designed by Walter Gropius (Bauhaus), was also considered. Concerning this complex, the successful use of local building materials and modern (at that time) technologies was noted, as well as the simplicity of solutions. The findings cited the main causes of the emergence and proliferation of slums in the world and in the Kingdom of Morocco in particular. The main reasons for the spread of illegal construction should be considered: population migration and rapid demographic growth, inaction and corruption of the responsible governing and control bodies for reconstruction and construction, the lack of qualified technical specialists and engineers, complicated legal and administrative stages, the creation of unstructured residential communities, and the limited income of most citizens. It is noted that in Morocco, one of the main reasons for the emergence of illegal development is the population migration of the country’s population in search of work. This is especially true for agricultural workers.

Solidarity in diversity: online petitions and collective identity in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Bill Movement

Collective identity is a key catalyst of protest mobilization. How does collective identity come into existence among strangers with diverse backgrounds, especially in movements without a centralized leadership? Although collective identity is often seen as something constructed by movement organizations or out of established networks, we describe a more bottom-up and decentralized process in which movement collective identity is created through the horizontal mobilization of intermediate identities, which leverage pre-existing social identifications to induce commitment among individuals. Focusing on Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Bill Movement of 2019, we argue that online petitions against the controversial bill created intermediate group identities among myriad social groups, such as alumni, professions, hobby groups, and residential communities. These intermediate identities provided rich discursive resources for previously disconnected individuals to collectively perceive the threat of the bill and see the obligation to act, which, in turn, shaped a strong collective identity early on in the protests. Our findings may help contribute to a more nuanced understanding of collective identity formation in contemporary leaderless movements.

Cognitive Interviewing to Evaluate the Content Validity of a Photo-Supported Preference Assessment

Photo-supported verbal assessments have shown to improve comprehension and expression of choices by older adults living with cognitive-communication challenges. The purpose of this study was to assess content validity (CV) of photographs used to supplement the Preferences for Everyday Living Inventory-Nursing Home (PELI-NH) from the perspective of older adults, using cognitive interviewing methods. Participants (N=21) were average age 75 (SD=5.67), mostly male (62%) and white (90%), living in residential communities (86%), with no known cognitive or communication deficits. Interview data was used to iteratively assess and revise photographs. A total of 46 photographs demonstrated CV; 26 demonstrated CV after revisions; 3 did not demonstrate CV after revisions. Content analysis revealed thematic codes describing participants’ photograph preferences including image quality, context, subject diversity, and relevance to long-term care. Discussion will include implications for clinicians and researchers on how to evaluate and improve CV of photo-supported verbal assessments.

Research on the Generation and Design Method of Residential Community Scheme Based on Improving Design

Along with the urban renewal and development, the urban living environment has given rise to various problems that need to be solved. With an eye on the future development model of residential communities, an experimental preliminary design for the construction of architectural space, public space, and landscape space based on people’s actual needs is carried out in an attempt to alleviate the more urgent symbiotic relationship between people and urban environment. To this end, this paper proposes a planning and design generation framework for the constructed external spatial environment of building groups based on a recursive double-adversarial network model. Firstly, we extract the features of the constructed external spatial environment of the building group in depth and generate the expression feature map, which is used as a supervisory signal to generate an expression seed image of the constructed external spatial environment of the building group; then we use the generated seed image together with the constructed external spatial environment of the original target building group as the input to generate a feature-holding image as the output of the current frame, and the feature-holding image is also used as the input for the next. Finally, the seed image generation network and the feature-holding image generation network are recursively used to generate the next frame, and the video sequence of the expressions of the constructed external spatial environment of the building group with the same feature-holding expressions as the original input is recursively obtained several times. The experimental results on the building group database show that the proposed method can generate clear and natural video frames of the constructed external spatial environment of the building group, which can be gradually derived from the design of building units to the construction of the building group and penetrate into the planning and design of the external spatial environment in order to comprehensively improve the living environment of urban population and provide a design method and theoretical support for the design of future urban residential communities.

Design and realisation of residential property management information system based on browser/server mode

The data filling, mathematical calculations and statistical operations for property management are realised by a system development tool that adopts the browser/server (B/S) architecture, Java, as the development language and a framework that adopts Spring MVC mode; additionally, the MySQL database is used, the source code and database interaction process use the Mybatis framework and the front-end display uses the VUE.js framework.. Functional modules include the following elements: owner information, real estate information, engineering equipment, personnel management and lease management. The system has passed the functional test, if it has been in trial operation for 1 year in multiple residential communities and has the characteristics of simple operation, stable operation and strong scalability, among others.

Design Optimization and Comparative Analysis of 100% Renewable Energy Systems for Residential Communities in Typical Areas of China When Considering Environmental and Economic Performance

A 100% renewable energy system (RES) satisfies a user’s energy demand using only renewable energy, which is an important energy supply in China given that the government aims to realize carbon neutrality by 2060. The design and operation of 100% RESs in different areas would vary significantly due to the impacts of climates and geographical features. This study aimed to investigate the economic and environmental performance of 100% RESs for residential communities in different areas of China. In total, 30 typical cities were chosen based on the climate characteristics and the availability of renewable energy resources. The genetic algorithm was selected to obtain the optimal design of the 100% RES in each area by taking the minimum total annual cost and the minimum CO2 emissions as optimization objectives. The results showed that 100% RESs were dominated by solar energy and biomass. The investment could be recovered in 8 years if the economic performance was optimized in most areas, but the payback period became longer when the 100% RES was optimized when considering environmental performance. The emissions could be reduced by 86–99% for CO2 and 64–97% for NOx. The results of this study would provide data support for the investment of 100% RESs in rural or suburban areas of China.